I have referred to the service to literature and to the intellectual development of mankind (a service none the less important because it was so entirely unintended) brought about through the action of the Church in preparing Indexes that served to chronicle the books of the thinkers and thus to preserve and extend their teachings. It is natural to enquire to what extent this service was offset by the interference with literary production and distribution caused by the burdens of censorship and by the repressive measures of the inquisitors and other censors. To such an enquiry there can be no very satisfactory answer. The materials or data for any precise calculation do not exist. In the chapter on the Index and the Book-trade, I have however presented such general data as I have been able to secure concerning the effect of the censorship regulations upon the operations in different States of the printer-publishers and the booksellers. It is evident that the extent of the influence of the system is not to be measured by the number of books condemned after publication or after being put into type. It is probable that the restrictions and detriments placed in the way of literary production constituted a more important influence on the intellectual life and development of the people than the cancellation or expurgation of books that had already come into existence. These latter might be reprinted, and to a considerable extent were reprinted, in other countries, in which case their authors would be able to feel that their work had not been altogether without results. But the influence of the writers who were deterred from writing, and of the lecturers who were afraid to continue to speak, was lost not only for their own community but for their own development, unless, as from time to time happened, they preferred banishment to repression and silence. Whether the leaders of thought were expatriated or were silenced, the effect in the home country on the university centres and on the so-called educated circles was the same. At the very time when in Italy, France, Germany, and the Low Countries the intellectual activities were greater than ever before known, and minds working in new directions of research were expressing themselves in varied and suggestive literary productions, scholarship in Spain had been confined in a few fixed channels, its expression had become stilted and reiterative, and the literature of thought, imagination, and opinion had almost disappeared. It would be interesting to ascertain whether an intelligent Romanist of to-day, who believed conscientiously in the necessity, or at least in the wisdom, of ecclesiastical censorship, would be prepared to accept as satisfactory the results of such a system in the one country in which it had been carried on with any measure of consistency and thoroughness.